


Our Honored Guests

by noah_pascal



Series: Dreaming back thru life [2]
Category: Everyman HYBRID
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Closeted Characters, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Interfaith Family, Minor Character Death, Multi, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 02:04:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17235266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noah_pascal/pseuds/noah_pascal
Summary: For seven days, you shall dwell in booths; you shall gather together the citron, the palm, the myrtle, and the willow; and you shall have nothing but joy. // Seven times Maryann had visitors, and one time she was the guest.





	1. 20-21 October 1970 – Abraham and Sarah

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone out there with their eschatology hat on is wondering why I would keep talking about sukkot after the way aotkia ended…I wish I knew!
> 
> This was supposed to be a single chapter of m&o (and its title definitely would have been Ecc 1:9), so make no mistake, this may be “the season of our joy,” but I’m still the same depressed, melodramatic bastard I’ve always been.
> 
> [Here’s a handout from the Rabbinical Assembly](http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/jewish-law/holidays/sukkot/or-hadash-ushpizin.pdf), so if you’d like, you can get an idea of why these pairs and why eight chapters.
> 
> [This video shows the style of the Corenthals' sukkah.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MrWmAEEAow)
> 
> This isn’t fact, advice, or instruction. In addition to the existing content tags, there will also be some chapter specific notes. You know I can’t shut up.

James thought she’d gone to get something out of the car, so he didn’t think anything about her being out there for a while—it could take a second or two to find anything in there. They were both guilty of leaving their things behind, and the back seat was, frankly, a damn mess of books, pens, and useless paperwork no one had bothered to throw away. If it turned out she did need one of the forms they’d tossed back there, it would take her a minute to find it.

But after several minutes without hearing a door slam, he put his book down and his house shoes on and went downstairs to check on her.

The living room was dark, but fingers of light stretched through it from where Maryann had been reading at the dinner table. Her chair was pulled out and her bible left open, like she only meant to be gone a moment. James frowned and moved past the drawn curtains, the unplugged record player, and the empty guest room, towards the table to peek at where she’d been reading. 

Deuteronomy? Yeah, he’d probably run away, too.

James slipped a piece of paper between the pages before closing it, then headed to the back door and stepped into the chilly night air. Looking to the patio instead of the car, he found her slouched in one of their rickety picnic chairs, squeezing an apple hard enough to turn her knuckles white. She tensed at the door opening and glanced at him for a second, then looked back to her hands and asked, “You ever feel like you’re half-assing your whole life?”

What, like the feeling of starting a degree with the intention to lock himself in a lab, then turning it clinical, ending up unsure if he’s helping children or studying them? Like the feeling of irrational shame over her father providing for them? Or the lingering guilt over not being able to give her a proper wedding and _everything_ to do with Adam, even though Maryann’s right there with him? 

“Only constantly,” he admitted.

She smiled wide, continuing to look away from him, now over the treeline, and kept fiddling with the apple. “Oh well,” she sighed. “There goes that idea.”

“Was I not supposed to tell the truth?” he asked, trying to match her humor.

“No, definitely not,” she said. “You’re supposed to say ‘Everything’s fine. Of course I know what I’m doing.’”

“I have no fucking idea what I’m doing.”

She threw her head back laughing and took the opportunity to wipe at her eyes. “I guess if no one knows, that’s okay, too.” Finally looking at him, she shook the apple. “Want some?”

He grabbed the other chair, scraping it across the concrete next to hers, and she passed it over when he sat down. Then he was the one staring at it, mulling over how this might look if someone were to see them. What were the Corenthals doing now? Was he stargazing in his pajamas? Why was she barefoot and staring at fruit?

“Why are we out here eating apples?” he asked.

The backyard was empty save for the shed, and she spread her arms out, gesturing to the whole lot of nothing. “No sukkah,” she told him. “Can’t eat apples in your sukkah if you don’t have one. Definitely can’t eat bread if you don’t have one,” she said in a conspiratorial tone.

The aluminum frame creaked as he leaned over and replied in the same tone, “I’ve been watching you eat bread all week.”

She shushed him. “Today’s my last chance for repentance. Don’t blow it.”

“Is that why we’re out here,” he questioned, bouncing the apple in his palm, “playing with fruit?”

“No, I’m just an idiot,” she groaned and pressed her hands into her cheeks.

He dropped the apple between his feet. Gently knocking the back of his hand against her arm, he said, “Hey, I don’t take that talk from my patients, and I certainly won’t take it from you.”

She grumbled and let her legs go slack, her arms flopping over the sides of the chair and her head dangling over the back.

“Come on, Miss Maryann,” he teased. “Use your words.”

She raised her head and waved one hand behind her at the house, gestured at the yard with the other. “I can’t be in Canton and Alliance and Louisville, and I feel like I’m just half-assing it for everyone,” she said, then sighed and let her head drop back again.

Her synagogue, her job, her home. “Is this a ‘no man can serve two masters’ thing?”

“Among other things, I suppose.” She gave him a thin smile. “‘How long halt ye between two opinions?’”

He reached for her hand. “Am I doing something to make you feel like this?”

“Oh, _b’shert_ , no.” It startled him every time she said it, when she called him her soul mate, her _intended_ —or that’s what Adam said, anyway. He hadn’t asked her for a vocabulary lesson since the treasure incident—that when she tipped her lawn chair to kiss him, even nudging his face towards her, she only got half his mouth before rocking back. “I tried to do,” she paused to wave her hand around some more, “reading tonight, and now I just feel inadequate.”

He squeezed her hand, told her, “Your life has completely changed in a few months. You are doing your best. I think you should give yourself some time to find a routine before you start accusing yourself of serving demons.”

She laughed too loud, much more distraught than amused. “You don’t have to serve them to let them do their work.” Before he could ask what she meant, she grimaced and squeaked out, “I’m not doing anything right. I miss my dad, and I’m not doing anything right.”

When she didn’t offer up anything else, he told her, “It may feel that way,” and standing up, keeping hold of her hand, continued, “but I assure you, it’s not true.”

Maryann rose out of the chair after him at his tugging, let him put his arm around her and walk her back in the house. 

 

Adam leaned back in his chair, scribbled on his clipboard, and told him, “You’re not missing anything. She’s not going to quit her job. She’s just sad.”

He leaned forward, trying to look over the edges of the board, falling back in the seat when Adam wouldn’t play along. “Are you writing unflattering things about me?”

“No, I’m actually doing my job,” he said and signed his name with wide strokes of his wrist, then dropped the clipboard on his desk. “Which begs the question, why are you not in your office?”

James brought his hand up to massage his temple. “You know why I’m not in my office.”

“Because you’re a psychologist who forgot people get extra weepy during the holidays?” Adam grabbed the next sheet in his inbox and looked it over, saying, “Which is unbelievable considering how you get—”

And then he started rubbing the other. “Okay, Adam.”

Adam sighed. “All I’m saying is, after you get through the next couple of days, she probably won’t be quite as miserable. It’s just that time of year.”

“Sure, I guess,” he conceded because he didn’t have much experience with this part of the year. Repentance and in-gathering, casting away stones and all that. For him, this was jack-o-lantern season leading into All Saints, candy and candles. And formerly midterm stress season. Hard to unlearn that.

“Just, let me know if I shouldn’t come over Friday?”

James took a second to consider it, but said, “I don’t think she’s that upset.”

“If she’s feeling guilty all of a sudden,” Adam countered, cutting himself off to wave his hand between himself and James.

“About her dad. She hasn’t said anything about _that_.” James leaned back and put his hands in lap, thoughtful. “Good God, if anything, you not showing up would stress her out more. I can’t believe I have to tell her you’re trying to weasel out—”

“Fine, forget I said anything.” He looked at the paper in his hand one more time and crumpled it, grousing, “I’m still coming, even if it’s only to keep you from getting lost.”

He smiled, sinking further into the chair. “You know I’m only at services to sit and look pretty.”

“Exactly what you’re not being paid to do now.” James tried to get in an _oh I’m pretty?_ , but Adam spoke loudly over him, “Please get out of my office.”

 

He’d gone to her classroom, then the staff room when she wasn’t waiting for him in reception as per usual. Not in administration, the secretaries shrugging at him when he asked if they’d seen her, and he decided against having her paged so her students wouldn’t give her a hard time tomorrow about _being called to the office ooo_. The halls were starting to clear out of everyone besides the swing shift care staff, and he stopped a pair of aides to ask if she’d come their way.

“Yeah, sure,” one said, pointing to the TV room. “Just saw her.”

There she sat, folded up on a couch with a pen behind her ear, talking with one of the older residents—Katie, one Stevens mainly looked after—about a paper she was holding out to Maryann.

“This,” Em said, tapping on the page. “I really like this part.”

“Really?” she asked and leaned closer.

“Yeah, this section—”

Katie must have seen him move in the doorway and looked up. “Uh oh, Dr. Husband’s here,” she announced and pulled her paper back, shoving it away in a notebook.

Maryann gave him an apologetic smile and stood, telling Katie, who was taking the opportunity to spread herself over the freed space, “We can talk about it more tomorrow,” as she zipped up her jacket and gathered her tote bag and purse.

To the rest of the room, she called out, “Bye, everyone!” and slung her bags over her shoulder, waving her way out the door to a chorus of _Bye, Miss Maryann_ ’s and a few _Bye, Dr. C._ ’s

Out in the hall, he leaned in close to ask, “Dr. Husband?”

Maryann put her hand over her mouth and snickered. “I didn’t say it to her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He hmm’d. “What were you two working on?”

“She was showing me her poetry.”

“Are you her favorite already?”

She whispered, “I think I’m just nonthreatening,” and didn’t elaborate further.

He let the silence hang until they were closer to the front door. “About Katie,” he started, then went quiet again, thinking of how to proceed.

“Yeah?” she prompted, adjusting her bags.

“Well,” he admitted, “I guess it’s more about last night.”

“Oh—”

She started going red in the face, and he tried to explain himself before she could needlessly apologize. “I was worried I needed to have a speech planned where I’d tell you that you could quit this job and do whatever makes you happy, but,” he paused briefly to push the door open and hold it for her. “But, obviously, that was a ridiculous idea.”

Her eyebrows raised, and he plowed on, “Seeing you in there, with her, it’s clear that it was a terrible idea that definitely wouldn’t have made anything better. I mean, you can do whatever you want, but—I guess I’m saying I’ll help you do whatever you need to feel better.”

The sky was getting cloudy as they walked to the car, and she was quiet and looking at the ground, but he decided to ask anyway, “You want to take a walk? Go to the park before the rain starts?”

She stopped in front of the trunk, then closed her eyes and smiled. “I think that sounds lovely.”

 

There was a tiny park on the west side of Louisville, one they’d only had time to visit once before they had to start truly being adults, one with a short loop of a walking path and a bench near the fish pond. And that’s where they’d settled, next to a copse of willows whose leaves were already changing, green leaves turning yellow and dropping unpredictably into the water. The rain sputtered on them as they sat down, and they flipped the hoods of their coats up to buy a few more minutes before it forced them to leave.

They’d been talking about their days as they’d ambled along the trail, about the patient who was only interested in talking if he could pace the walkways between buildings and the student who got a little too vigorous clapping erasers, but the conversation lulled as they dropped to the bench, and James brought up the other issue bothering him. “Adam was saying maybe he shouldn’t come over this weekend.”

“Uh, any particular reason why?” she asked, frowning.

“He was thinking that you might be having second thoughts about him staying over.”

Maryann picked at a piece of lint on her skirt. “He has a standing invitation to come over; that’s not a problem.”

“No, not that. How did he phrase it,” he said, then waved his hand between them.

She stared confusedly at his gesturing for a second, her lips pursing then falling flat. She lowered her voice to say, “Okay, no, that’s not happening. That’s not changing, and I’m not quitting my job, or whatever else you guys have been thinking.” She took a breath and explained, “It’s—it’s been rough because I’m never going to get to sit in our old sukkah again.

“I hadn’t in years, and now I’ll never get to again, and then I didn’t think we had time to learn how to build our own this year, and,” she threw her hands up and groaned.

“And I don’t know if I like the choices I made about _that_.” She lowered her voice again. “Not about my job, not about Adam. Were _you_ worried I didn’t want him around?”

He told her, “No, he brought it up when I stopped by his office,” then added, “I wanted to check that I hadn’t done something wrong, you know, with everything.”

“Oh, no, love,” she said, watching the wind shake another bunch of leaves from the trees, “I’d say you’re doing just fine.”


	2. 30 September 1971 – Isaac and Rebecca

It’s not from a place of selfishness that he says he’s grateful Maryann’s year of mourning is over. Yes, he’s relieved that they can go back to something approaching their old normal. He can take her out to dinner again; they can turn the radio dial away from the news. They’ve made it through the hardest part, and he’s breathing easier, at least.

But when he confides in Adam how happy he is that she’s done with that part, he’s talking about seeing the sadness over her start to disperse bit by bit as they’ve gone past the end of the first year. How she can remember him now without the weight of obligation hanging on her, without having to worry if she’d been doing enough to show how good he was. He means that she walks easier now, not having to carry around justifications and judgment, losing the stiff posture of _My mother was gone before I knew it, and my would-be brother went with her. It was only us, and now, it’s only me. See what he raised_.

Maryann can truly let his memory be a blessing, finally, wheezing as she turns to him and says, “Oh, if he could see us now,” from where she’s bent over, hands on knees, next to their minor construction accident. She can’t stop laughing even after they right the panels that their uncertain hands tilted too far and lost control of, smacking into her before toppling over onto the lawn.

He asks, “Is it really that funny?” as he works with her to make the corner square.

“How’s our future in restoration looking right now?” she quips at him for an answer, hooking her fingers into the panel and beaming through the gaps. Pulling back, she wipes at her eyes and genuinely questions, “Do you think it’ll look weird so close to the shed?”

James shrugs and stares at the singular eight foot tall corner standing in their yard, swaying with the breeze. “Maybe,” he says, looking at her positioned between the panels. “Enough to move it again? Risk its jaws closing in on you?”

She quickly nods, feigning earnest consideration, turns back to the stack of wood, and kneels to tie the next two pieces together. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s fine where it is.” He joins her on the ground, and she tells him in actual seriousness, “I don’t know if we should get a real kit for next time or not.”

“Well, we only just figured out hand drills. Anything else might be a bit advanced for us,” he kids, and his dumb joke sends her into another round of quaking laughter. So much, it takes her a second to secure the last knot because her whole body’s shaking. But she gets it together, then stands, and he follows, ready to lift the section off the pile.

As they raise the panels, he asks, “So? You think there’s any hope for us?”

“I’m sure we’ll get there one day,” Em assures him, unfolding this corner next to the first.

 

He thinks he heard a car door shut, but it’s difficult to tell when Maryann’s yelling at him to get off the ladder, this is the opposite of helping, how can she get anything done with his face in her ass.

If he were higher off the ground, it might be easier to see if Adam’s coming around back, he tells her, acting like he’s going to climb higher and step on the same rung she’s on. It makes her shriek and cling to the ladder even though it doesn’t rock.

“All this noise,” Adam asks, stepping off the driveway, “and you only have one wall up?”

“Not even!” she shouts to him, shaking the length of rope in her hand, and risks turning her head to James while staying hunched over and gripping the ladder. “Get down so I can tie the wall together.”

James presses against her so she can feel him shrug. “Suit yourself,” he says, stepping down from the rungs, but gets stopped by Adam at the bottom, who puts his foot on the first step and leans into James.

“No, no, it’s safer this way. Hold on, I’ll climb up, too,” he tells them, completely deadpan.

Maryann’s groan is so loud it’s a struggle to contain his laugh, so he really doesn’t shake the ladder.

 

The bundles of corn stalks are untied and gathered into his arms. He passes them to Maryann on the ladder while Adam holds her steady, seriously this time. While she’s sliding the first one into place, James takes the next and whaps it against Adam’s leg. “What kept you?”

Adam laughs. “Late transfer paperwork. High priority,” he says, nodding sagely.

“And what’s so funny about that?” he asks, passing the stalk to Maryann and pulling out another, tapping this one on Adam’s shoes.

“You’ll never guess,” he says as he jerks the stalk out of James’s hand and stretches to lay it over the beams, “where this one’s coming from.”

He blanks momentarily, but Adam starts to grin, and James’s eyes go wide. “No.”

“Oh, yes.”

He thinks he’s talking to Adam, but he could be shouting it to the universe for all the good it’d do. “Wasn’t three enough?”

Maryann stills, and he realizes he isn’t passing her her roofing material. He holds more out to her, but she’s looking at Adam. “That town? _Again_?”

She snaps her attention back to James and accepts the stalks, and he slaps his freed hand to his forehead. “So, what? Is the whole town coming? What happened this time?”

“You won’t believe it, but another kid was found surrounded by her dead family.”

James’s mouth falls open at the same time Maryann covers hers.

“Wait, get this,” Adam says as he holds his hand up in front of James, trying to physically hold back his questions. “This happened twice.

“Twice,” he repeats, “neighbors find her alive and everyone else in the house dead,” and lets his hand drop.

James has a thousand questions fighting to leave his mouth. The disgusting questions of how did they die and where exactly was she found. The practicals, like her name and age. The improbable notion that hysterical neurosis is moving through the anthracite region, and someone needs to warn Byrnesville.

He settles for his most immediate concern. “Is she going to be one of mine, too?”

Adam nods, saying, “You seem to have a way with the others,” takes the last stalks out of James’s arm, and slides them into the roof.

“This isn’t normal, right?” They both look to Maryann, climbing down the ladder. “To have a rash like this, all from the same place, all of them,” she tries to gesture the rest of her thought, not able to succinctly say frequently found surrounded by suspicious deaths, suspected of murder but found with their hands clean, how could such a small ten year old possibly take down a grown woman and have the strength to—

“Not while I’ve been working there, no,” Adam answers.

Maryann frowns as tension settles over them, all of them thinking about their future arrival, about what must have happened for her to be labeled _urgent_ , to get them to rush her out of state, what information must be missing from her file. Looking between him and Adam, she swipes her arms through the air. “Moratorium on any more work talk tonight.”

As he and Adam nod in agreement, she grabs their hands and pulls them closer. “Good. Now help me make sure the gaps aren’t too big.”

 

Dinner’s finished, the leftovers put away, and the dishes done. Mostly done. Close enough. 

James passes Maryann the driest dish towel for her hands while Adam rattles the last pieces of silverware into the drawer. The kitchen is otherwise quiet with their work nearly done, and Maryann gathers up the rest of the towels and pads off to the basement to dump them in the washer. Her footfalls make soft taps against the linoleum and down the stairs as Adam steps behind him, puts his hands on the joints of his shoulders, and trails kisses up the back of his neck, into his hair.

If Adam weren’t holding on to him, squeezing his arms to keep him in place, he’d let himself sink, rest his body against the counter, but Adam doesn’t let him drop. He threads his arms under James’s, and the drag has him gasping, loud enough to draw a surprised _oh_ out of Maryann, stepping back into the kitchen.

Her face is reflected in the window, the darkness outside turning the glass into a mirror, and she smirks at him, at his flushed face and his teeth digging into his lip. Shaking her head, she takes one last look outside before closing the curtains.

Adam takes his mouth away from James’s skin and rests his chin on his shoulder. Looking at Maryann, he asks, “Does it remind you of your old one?”

She answers, “No,” as she cups Adam’s cheek and presses her entire body against James. “It’s nothing like my old one, and that’s absolutely perfect.”


	3. 24 September 1975 – Jacob and Leah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evan calls Vinny a fruit, but not to be mean.

“Mom!” Sitting in the shade at one of the Corenthal’s card tables, Kim watched as Maryann whipped her head around to Evan hanging out the back door, wiggling his hand, thumb and pinky out. “Phone! Dad!”

Her eyes closed and shoulders sagged as she let out her breath. “I guess I should take this back in anyway, before it blows away,” she said, placing the etrog back in its box and taking it and the lulav in hand. “You want to wait here?”

Kim quickly stood and followed her across the yard. “No offense, but I’m not sitting alone next to your creepy shed.”

Maryann slowed down, struggling to keep a straight face, and asked, “What’s wrong with our shed?”

“I’m convinced a spider this big,” she said and paused to hold up her thumbs and forefingers in a wide circle, “is gonna come crawling out of there and try to spend Sukkot with you.” 

“Now that’s a thought,” she said and continued walking. “You think he’ll come eat all the nuts while we’re gone? Should I have left these out there for him?” she asked, giving the branches one more shake.

Kim told her, “You’re not funny.” Pointing at nothing in particular, at the sky more than anything, she continued, “And you won’t be laughing when one’s dangling from your two by fours with all the other decorations.”

She was laughing now though, shoulders shaking, as she stepped onto the pavement and towards Evan, still holding the door open. Maryann said, “Thanks for waiting for us,” and ducked inside.

“Yeah, thanks, Ev,” Kim added, reaching to grab the door over his hand. He said, “Sure,” and walked ahead of her into the house, so she could close the screen door without it slamming.

Jeff, waiting on the phone with James, made to hand the phone off, but Maryann nodded at her full hands. She told him, “Just a sec, let me set this down,” hurrying into the dining room to set her things, presumably, on the table. Kim never bothered buying this stuff, and Adam hardly ever did, but their parents had, then always tried keeping theirs in the fridge, inevitably giving up and buying new willow branches halfway through instead.

Whatever Maryann was doing with hers, it took the second she asked for, and Kim was left standing vaguely out of place in the warm kitchen. Between the oven keeping dinner hot, the pots waiting on the stove, and four kids milling about, she’d seriously consider taking her sweater off if she didn’t know she’d soon be going back outside. So she crossed her arms and stood out of the way, watched Evan and Vinny pull out place settings and Steph fill a pitcher with water, and Jeff was still on the phone, saying to his dad, “Yeah, she just needs to put her fruit and stuff away.”

Kim put her hand over her mouth, trying to cover up her enjoyment over _fruit and stuff_ , and almost missed—then pretended not to see—Evan cracking open a cabinet and seemingly gesturing Vinny inside, which turned into a minor shoving match that Steph, still trying to fill the pitcher, sidestepped away from. 

The horseplay cutoff as Maryann came back, said a thank you to Jeff, and answered James. “Hey…yeah, hold on.” She took her mouth away from the receiver and asked, “If James runs about twenty minutes late, will that put you too far behind?”

She wished. She’d love an excuse to call off. Super important meeting came up in my friends’ backyard, running late, can’t make it. She told Maryann, truthfully, “No, he can take his time. I don’t need to be there until half past eight.”

Maryann nodded and put her mouth back to the receiver, said, “Kim says she’ll never forgive you for this betrayal,” and the kids all started laughing under their breath. “Okay, love you, too. Bye.”

“Wow,” Kim said. “That seemed a little dramatic.”

Steph shut the tap off and looked over her shoulder, affirming, “It was pretty dramatic,” which Jeff took as an opportunity to start a story about the whole family, elves, dwarves, and magic, with Vinny, Evan, and Steph trying to add more details. They didn’t get to explaining the betrayal incident, Maryann cutting them off with, “The short version is we’ve been having a great time playing with James’s birthday gift from Adam.”

“He sent you something that turned you into wizards?”

“I’m a cleric,” Maryann said and turned to let Vinny and Evan put plates and silverware into her hands.

In response to her, and Evan and Steph’s _no, we’re fighters_ , Kim shrugged, then teased, “I guess I’m not that familiar with this much nerd stuff.”

Maryann told her, “You need to come over one weekend and join in,” and bumped the screen door open, holding it with her hip.

“Hand something to me?” Kim asked the kids, and Steph passed off the pitcher. Kim slipped out the door with her hands full while Maryann reminded them they needed jackets when they came out.

She asked again, while walking back across the lawn, “You sure you’re okay waiting a little?”

“Maryann, it’s fine. Nothing would make me happier than not having to go in to work.”

“Well, if someone besides you has to do data collection tonight, we could probably talk James into setting up the game,” she said, playful at first, then slipping into a frown as they made it back to the sukkah. “If whatever call he’s waiting for goes all right.”

Kim sat the water down and took the silverware off Maryann’s stack of plates. “Expecting bad news for someone?”

“It’s someone from legal, so a resident probably got cleared for discharge.” She sighed and hung her head before straightening up and setting the plates around the tables. “I don’t know. I’m worried it’s the court jerking us around again.”

Kim didn’t know what to say exactly. They’d been going through this messy situation nearing a year now. Probationary periods and fostering and the adoption petitions. The fighting with various law enforcement agencies of Ohio _and_ Pennsylvania. The utter devotion to these kids and the need have them permanently settled in their home.

“Now, it’s not just their health. They’re trying to use February against them, and the home’s attorneys are—” She set down the last plate and threw her hands up. “I have no idea what they’re doing, and I think we’re gonna end up having to ask William for help.”

Kim put a hand between her shoulders, and when Maryann slumped at her touch, she wrapped her whole arm around her. “What does James think about that?”

“You know precisely what James thinks about that.” She mumbled, resting her head on Kim’s shoulder, “Maybe I can ask Rose to help.”

The back door slammed shut, and Maryann tried to twist her mouth back into a smile, only managed a sad laugh. “The only thing I want to mediate around here are the arguments over who gets to use the hatchet to cut branches down.”

Kim was suddenly, terribly sorry she’d missed building day. “How’d that turn out?”

“We all took turns. Even those of us who didn’t want to do it in the first place,” she said, pointing at her chest, and finally managed a smile.

“Mom?” The horde had arrived, armed with napkins and cups and concern at the worry still sitting on Maryann, and Vinny was asking, “Are you all right?”

Maryann could talk to them about the adoption stuff later, if she even needed to—she was probably right the first time, that James just had a phone call informing him he needed to sign his name a few dozen times for the legal staff, so Kim answered for her, “She’s telling me how you all fought over a deadly weapon, and she had to pry it out of your hands to save you from yourselves, you fiends.”

Steph squinted, looking extraordinarily like James. “I don’t remember it happening quite like that.”

Maryann shook her head and played along. “No, you’re right. But that’s how it felt, at least.”

 

“So…” Kim reached up to bat her hand against the garlands spreading thick and dangling over their heads. “How’d you get them to sacrifice their dignity and make paper chains?”

Maryann pointed towards her pack of yelling children, at Vinny trying to carry Evan on his back and Jeff and Stephanie collapsing in on themselves at the look on Evan’s face. “Does it seem like they needed much convincing?”

She knew how they could get. Half of the time she was the one who got them going, and rambunctious was too euphemistic a word for it, but that wasn’t what she meant. She turned around in her chair to look at Maryann again. “After the age of ten, I thought looking at construction paper was for babies. You’re telling me you handed them some glue, and they just went to town?”

“They really went wild, didn’t they?” she offered, with a soft smile, looking up at all the chains. No rhyme or reason to the order or size, just a riot of swaying colors under the pine boughs. “I may have mentioned wanting them when I was a kid, but Dad wouldn’t let me. I didn’t think they’d make so many.”

Across the table, Kim rested her chin in her hands. “That’s cute.”

“It’s a fire hazard!” she exclaimed, not looking the least bit upset over it. “I thought we were gonna have to carry the candles back in the house.”

“Is that why your dad didn’t want you to put them up?” Kim asked hushed, leaning towards her from across the table, like it was some big secret. “He knew you’d burn the sukkah down?”

Maryann sat waving her hand back and forth, as if his spirit had wandered in to listen, and she wanted him to step away. “He’d give me a line about how our guests were the real decoration, but he was just trying to keep me from putting holes in things or messing the paint up with tape.”

“You painted it? Like, designs on it or all one color, or?”

Her face started to color pink, high on her cheeks, then spreading across her face. “It—” she started, but covered her mouth with her hands and groaned, “You’re gonna make fun of me.”

“Uh, yeah, probably. If you’re this worked up over it.” Not that Maryann was supremely composed, but enough that she could usually keep it together when kids, students, patients, _otherwise_ , got rowdy.

“We had a room in our house where the roof pulled back.” Her eyebrows went up, and seeing Kim’s mouth drop, ready to tease, Maryann got louder. “We weren’t the only family who had one like that!” She quieted down, like she really was telling a secret through her hand still over her mouth. “But no one I knew in Cleveland had that. No one here does. Is it really that weird?”

If they weren’t the only family with a transforming room, Kim supposed it really wasn’t _that_ weird, but she’d never tell her that. Kim rested her clasped hands on the table with as much dignity as possible, trying not to let herself smile, and told her, “Mary, you are something else.”

Maryann must have seen her mouth trembling with the effort and gave her a flat-faced, fed up stare, and started to say more, only getting out an _honestly_ , before James’s car pulled into the driveway, and the kids started shouting, “Hey, Dad!”

He looked tired like Maryann had been, but not angry or frustrated at whatever call he’d taken. He looked like a man who’d stayed late, not a dad getting the run around on his kids. Maryann lost some of her tension at the sight of him and let Kim off with an eye roll.

“I’m gonna start bringing the food out.” She stood, then leaned on the back of her chair to ask, “Are you okay waiting here now that you have your own adventuring party to protect you?”

“Shut up,” Kim said, standing and following Maryann towards the house again. “Like you’re really gonna carry it all by yourself.”


	4. 10 October 1979 – Joseph and Rachel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reference to dementia, Evan references a quote “In heaven, the most beautiful souls are those that have sinned the most and repented. But they made use of their miseries like manure around the base of the tree.” – Bl. Mariam Baouardy

Linnie turned seven in August, but she’s still small enough to tote. Evan knows personally because he slung her and her thick coat up into his arms this morning and made it most of the way to the back door before she squirmed her way down and out the door herself, running to Mom and Steph, ready to shake her palm frond around. Then, because she asked so nice, he let her up on his back to go inside, and he even knelt down to let her grab her backpack before heading out.

She’s doing so much better than he was at her age. Now, at least. Here with them, getting enough, with a whole village to take care of her. Not starting from a jerkwater town in Pennsylvania, but still starting from a tragedy. Or two.

Smarter than he was at her age, too. Speaks two languages. Sees everything and asks about it. Found a way to thrive already, even after what she’s been through. Like what the sisters used to say to him, about beautiful souls stacking their misery like manure around trees. She’s such a good kid.

But still so small. Little enough that Mom and Dad don’t want anyone walking her to school in the cold, so someone out of the multitude drives her every morning and picks her up in the afternoon, which means her teachers have had a hell of a time learning whose face they’re supposed to be looking for when school lets out. They know Mom well enough, but as for the rest of them, they’ve had to settle for recognizing the cars, and as long as she’s getting into a beat up station wagon, they’ll let her go.

They did get away with him biking her home once. After she swore he was her brother, they walked his bike down the road until they could turn off Nickel Plate, then he put on her kiddie bag and hauled her onto the handle bars. She didn’t scream once, not even when he took the curves too fast, then dipped to the side, and her knuckles went white squeezing his fingers. She never told Mom what they got up to, either, so he could spend the summer teaching her how to work a bike like he did. She took to it like everything she tried, like a duck to water.

Like the best little sister a guy could have.

They couldn’t get away with a stunt like that today, even if they wanted to. Instead of pulling his own bike out of the shed, Vin had asked him, while they were choking down their pills that morning, if he could borrow Evan’s bike to get to work, and he’d left for the grocery store on it after Dad but before Jeff and Stephanie all went off to Canton.

He doesn’t have work today, has plenty of time to get to his doctor’s office, and Mom really wants to finish cleaning the house for company. So, with Linnie’s arms wrapped around his neck, Mom puts food in their hands, and he’s the one taking Linnie to the car, where she tries to shove a banana and a granola bar in her mouth during the two minute drive.

Linnie doesn’t need his help for a lot of things. Not with her homework, not to make friends. She barely needs him to take her to school, and she definitely doesn’t need him hammering in her hard-learned lessons in long-suffering, but she waits patiently as he scrubs her cheeks with his thumb before he lets her go, then even tells him she loves him after she says good-bye.

 

He gets back home from therapy to Grandma Ruth’s rented van on the street where he normally parks their car.

Dad’s mom decided to move back home—technically Dad’s home, too. Technically. He rarely talks about life before college in general, but he never talks about New Jersey except in passing mention when he’s reminiscing about hiking trips with his grandparents or visits to the cranberry bogs with extended relatives. Evan wishes he could treat his hometown the same.

After he parks at the very back of their dead end street and comes in the front door, Ruth doesn’t mention it directly either. She only talks about seeing her parents again, how they just need a little help getting by, and how Mom should talk Dad into making at least one more trip out there.

“You know,” she says, her serene smile going slightly pinched, “while they’ve still got their sense.” 

For someone who was in college during the Sixties, Mom has shockingly little idea what to do with her hippie mother-in-law. She can try her normal hostess thing, make as much coffee and chitchat as she wants, but Ruth isn’t having it.

Mom and Dad might have passed on Woodstock trying to finish their degrees, but Ruth has been sitting on her five acres in Ashville playing with home remedies and meditating while the sun came up for years, and she doesn’t have time for small talk. Ruth wants to talk seriously, and if you’re not willing to share, she will. So when she casually mentions following a band around the country, Mom gets this look like she’s unsure of what she’s supposed to do, like she can’t really believe Ruth raised her husband.

They hardly ever see her, but she’s really keen on family, and when she’s temporarily done weirding Mom out and asking him a million questions about stock rooms and bagging groceries, she produces a box full of her old Catholic stuff and presses it into his hands. He looks inside at the tangle of beads, medals, cards, and missals as she tells him, “Your dad’s, mine, Grandma and Grandpa Corenthal’s.”

Her face turns perturbed. “I forget I’m Grandma Corenthal now. Oh well, you know, your great grandparents.”

He waits for Vinny to get home before digging through it.

 

Jeff brings their baby sister home today, to a living room where he and Vin, still in his work clothes, have spread the Blessed Virgin across the living room floor, and he stands there holding Linnie’s hand like he doesn’t know if they should step through their mess or not. Ruth makes the choice for him, waving him over, and he has to go through it to have have her stand on her toes to squeeze his shoulders and demand a full answer as to how he’s been.

And as soon as he answers to her satisfaction, she turns to Linnie dawdling in the front room and waves her over, too. “Carolyn, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Linnie.”

“Of course,” she agrees easily, “but you have to promise to call me Ruth.”

He can’t see Linnie’s face, but she straightens her spine the way she does when she’s being too serious for someone whose age is a single digit and gives Ruth a nod, and Ruth gives her the biggest smile in return.

Evan can see Ruth’s fingerprints all over Dad, in the way she asks Linnie if it’s all right to hug her, in her remembering to wait until she pulls away to ask at a normal volume if she’s been having a good Succos, and when Linnie only answers with another nod, Ruth doesn’t push her for more. She tells her that that’s wonderful, asks no one in particular what they usually do in the afternoon, and lets her leave to plop down next to him and Vin.

 

Vin’s flipping through cards, and Evan pages through a missal while Linnie sits across from them and plays with a rosary, nudging the loop into shapes on the carpet. She’s makes faces, but is quiet about her thoughts, one way or another, about her being surrounded by a throng of bleeding bodies.

She scoots closer to him, peeking at the page he’s on, at Mary wrapped in blue with her hair spilling out of her mantle. “Do you like her because she’s pretty?”

“I like her because she’s my mom.” Vin nods while he sorts through another stack of cards, but Linnie still looks skeptical.

He tries, “Like how Sarah and Abraham are our parents?” but she looks around her again, at all the sheep and roses, all the pictures of dead people that Vinny keeps telling her aren’t dead, and decides she’s had enough.

Getting to her feet, she wanders back to the dining room to sit with Jeff, but she can’t get away from religion because Ruth asks Jeff, “Do you think you’ll end up converting, too?”

The energy in the room doesn’t really change, but when he glances over, Mom’s starting to frown, and Linnie stops walking to stare at Jeff.

He shrugs, looking at the table, and from his spot on the floor, Evan can see his fingers gripping his knees. “I’d hate to upset the weird gender split we have.”

Ruth nods, accepting his non-answer, and—he’s sure she knows she’s made him uncomfortable—offers, “I just wondered. It’s great how you guys make it work together.” Her face takes on that pinched looked again. “William and I couldn’t find a compromise for anything, least of all that.”

Jeff lets his hands relax, but he’s still staring at the table when he says, “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s all right. It was such a long time ago.”

Linnie’s head swings between Mom and Ruth, and she asks, “Are you talking about Zayde?”

Ruth pauses for a moment, considering. “I suppose I am.” To Mom, she asks, “Did he ask to be called that?”

“Yeah. I mean, Rose was adamant about being called Bubbe, but James asked if he wanted to be called grandpa instead, and—” She lifts her palms. “He said no; he wanted to be Zayde.”

“If I ever got him to say anything _about_ Yiddish, it was that it was old and useless. What—” she says and throws her hands up. “I will never understand him.”

“Maybe Rose just has that way about her?” Mom guesses, starting to laugh. “She calls some times and won’t speak English, which is good for her,” she says, reaching out for Linnie. “And I appreciate what she’s doing, but when she does it to me…I know about as much as Linnie, and who else am I ever gonna use it with?”

With Linnie at arm’s length, Mom asks, “You have any homework?” and after she shakes her head no, she offers, “Then do you want to help me start dinner?”

“Oh, let me help,” Ruth says, getting out of her chair.

“Sure, thank you. We can make it an all hands on deck situation in here.”

Jeff gets up, too, catches Evan’s eye, and inclines his head towards the kitchen.

Evan closes the missal forcefully, and starts picking up chaplets, looping them over his palm, when he sees Vinny go stiff out of the corner of his eye. He leans over to see what has him spooked, and Vin’s pulled out a card of Judith. Sword in hand, a wrapped bundle on her lap.

He imagines how blood would spread through the cloth, color soaking into the fibers, wonders how she felt between the first and second swing. Did he thrash on his bed, big man laid low—

The _thwack_ of Vin throwing the card back in the box jolts Evan back to himself. “I’m gonna help Mom,” he says, looking as washed out as Evan feels. Vinny scoops the rest of their mess into his hands and dumps it in the box. “You coming?”

 

Steph hadn’t realized she was beaming when she ducked in the car as fast as possible to get out of the rain, but Dad asks as they take off, “Wow, sunshine, was it a good session today?”

No, it absolutely was not. Therapy after work was always a nightmare when you were already high strung from customers, and the doctor was another in a string of them who would just assume things about her past when they got tired of waiting for an acceptable answer. Her session was shit, and the only reason she’s smiling is because she’s thrilled to be going home, even when it means going right back out to sit in the cold again. Because she’ll be with her family.

Or, more likely, they’ll wait inside for the rain to quit, pile on sweaters and coats, and then sit outside with very little wall between them and the wind.

It sounds hilarious to her when she thinks of it like that, reducing the holiday to _that time of year we eat in the cold_ —or not because this is Ohio, and you know how it goes—thinks of trying to explain it to herself ten years ago, that not only will you love this—this stuff you’ve never heard of before, but you’ll sign up to do it on your own one day, and you’ll make a place for you to grow.

Thinks of getting to tell herself that she’s loved, truly. That she’s going to have parents that take time to sit down with her and tell her she’ll always be their daughter. Even if her last name couldn’t officially be _bat James v’Miriam_ , even if her other last name changed and she was someone other than Stephanie Corenthal again, even when she was fifty, she’d always be their little girl.

Thinks of how she gets to really be a big sister, no offense to her brothers, but it’s not the same, and she gets to share her whole life with all of them, and if the time they share is in their rickety, little sukkah that the wind blows through and the rain _legally_ has to pour into because how else could you see the stars, that’s perfect.


	5. 1 October 1980 – Moses and Miriam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evan calls Rabbi Menachem Recanati a fuckhead, but it's nothing personal.

“You can’t do that yet,” Jeff said slowly, with an edge of sick-of-having-to-tell you creeping in. “You need to roll first.”

Evan didn’t seem to care how many times Jeff told him no. It wasn’t the first time this afternoon that he kept scribbling on his sheet while slouching in his chair and countered with, “Bullcrap, I did it last week, and it wasn’t a problem then.”

“Dad can run it however he wants, and I’m going to run it how I want,” Jeff responded from behind his screen. “And if it bothers you this much, you can sit it out at the inn like Vinny.”

“I’m not sitting out to protest anything,” he said, passing his drawing to Linnie. The current argument and its previous variations had been going on long enough for him to put out quick lines of Evan in his magical robes preparing to hit Jeff with a staff, purely for Linnie’s amusement. She plucked the paper out of his hand, and he explained over her laughter and the clatter of crayons in their box, “I just don’t want to play right now.”

Evan carried on like Vinny hadn’t even spoken, “So it’ll just be you and Steph playing? Because Linnie doesn’t like it when you DM either.”

She didn’t look up from coloring the trim of the robe to tell him, “Evan, shut up.”

“Excuse me?” he asked over his shoulder. “Can I get a little support here?”

As Evan switched his target, Steph frowned, but didn’t try to stop him—didn’t encourage him either. She planted her elbow on the table, stuck her cheek in her hand, and let out the tiniest sigh. Nothing was holding her attention tonight; she’d grab a die, roll it around, set it back, doodle on her sheet, erase it, repeat, and she kept fidgeting more and more the longer this argument dragged on.

Next to him, Linnie reached for another crayon and started coloring in the rest of the robe. “No, just play it like Jeff says. This is dumb.”

Jeff crowed loud enough for it to make a tinny echo through the basement, “Finally, a voice of reason,” but Evan wasn’t listening, choosing to leave the table and head for Linnie.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, squeezing himself on to the love seat, squishing Linnie into Vin, making the crayon box rattle dangerously between them. “What Jeff’s doing is an egregious abuse of authority. I’m teaching you how to fight injustice.”

Linnie had been coloring on a pretty thick book which she smacked into Vin jerking it away from Evan, rightfully knowing he would try to tug it out of her hands. Plan briefly thwarted, Evan leaned into her harder so she was smushed between them. “You’re not teaching me anything,” she said, wiggling to get comfortable again, even as Evan laid an arm around her shoulders. “You’re just being contrary.”

He reached across her, pawing at her coloring page, slapping against the book, asking, “Why are you being so mean to me, Carolyn?” He leaned in more, wrapped his other arm around her, and moaned as she scraped at his hand with her crayon, “You’re so awful to me. You’re hurting my feelings.”

“No, I’m not. Let me color this,” she said and shoved at Evan with her whole body. “I want to get this done before I have to put the crayons up.”

“What is it? Where’s the book you got? This isn’t—no, really, what is this?” he asked, finally looking at what Linnie had tried to hold away from him. “Oh my god, Vin. Linnie, please, I need to show Jeff.”

He stopped his exaggerated tugging, and she let him take it. Sliding back into his chair, he waved his slightly waxy hand at Jeff, flapping Vin’s drawing. “You see this? This is art.”

Jeff’s face had gone vaguely smug at Linnie telling Evan to just shut up and go with it, but his face fell as he caught sight of the sketch: Evan half colored in violet and yellow, ready to beat the DM up the old fashioned way. “Vinny, come on, man.”

Vin couldn’t help it. He fell over the arm of the love seat, threw his arm over his face, laughing hard enough to shake Linnie even though she had the room to move away from him now. His laughing set her off, too, he supposed, but she could be giggling at Jeff’s dismay or Evan’s smarmy triumph for all he knew.

Evan’s shoulders were shaking, too, as he slid the drawing across the table to Steph who didn’t have much of a reaction, just stared at it with a flat look until their laughter stopped, and Evan reluctantly pulled it back.

The basement filled with an awkward silence, and Steph stayed looking anywhere except at them for long seconds until they heard the front door open, followed by a thud, a man’s aggravated voice saying _James_ , and the door creaking closed.

“Maybe we should call it quits,” Steph said in a rush, the first words she’d said since the last round of arguing kicked off, and it was startling to hear her try to intervene after all the bickering she’d sat party to. At everyone’s glances—he wasn’t the only one surprised to hear her voice—she clarified, at a slower pace, “Since company’s here?”

It could be unsettling to watch Evan’s behavior shift so quickly, how he could drop the asshole shtick and turn into her concerned brother in a heartbeat. He put his hands on the table and, leaning closer to her, asked, “Are you feeling all right?”

“Sure. Fine,” she said, pulling back in her chair.

Vin dropped his drawing pad on the side table and stood, catching Evan’s attention, whose caring brother attitude was reserved solely for Steph tonight, apparently, and it was Vin’s turn to get hassled. “Are you abandoning us in our time of need?” He jiggled the drawing towards Vin, then twisted around to hand it back to Linnie. “You draw this and leave? A house divided cannot stand, Vin.”

He moved to the stairs. “I’m going to the bathroom, if that’s all right with you.”

“I don’t know. Did you ask the DM?” he said and twisted again to face Jeff. “Does he need to roll to piss?”

“I am not involved in this,” he reminded them, heading upstairs to the sound of what was surely Steph’s hand connecting cartoonishly loud with Evan’s arm and Evan shouting, “Since when is piss a swear? Linnie, is piss a swear?” while Linnie giggled.

The kitchen was still empty, and they hadn’t brought Adam—he still felt strange calling him that, even though he hadn’t been his doctor for longer than he ever was—into the dining room. The couch and chairs were empty, and low voices drifted over from the stairs. Still by the front door, like they brought him in but then wouldn’t let him move because he might get away.

He thought he’d wait until they were done before he interrupted them going upstairs, though it looked like that might be a while, with Mom pressing her cheek against his shoulder in no rush to let him go and Dad hovering close by.

“You missed the whole thing,” she complained, as their hug began to sway.

“I didn’t miss the whole thing,” he argued. “We have one more day, that’s the point, and you know it.” Leaning down, he kissed the top of her head, and she turned her face to look him in the eyes, probably giving him that look she’d get as the holiday would go on, sad and hopeful whenever she’d space out. Probably, and however her faced looked, it must have been a _look_ because he took her face in both hands and kissed her.

Insomnia ran through all five of them—all seven of them, actually, given how often they found their parents shuffling through the living room dining room kitchen in their night clothes, but where Linnie was content to crawl into bed with Stephanie, or Jeff if Steph was up and Evan had the radio at just the right volume, the rest of them might end up doing the same wandering downstairs that their parents did, while hoping to get tired again. And they’d all heard their phone calls.

The late night _I love you’s_ and _I miss you’s_ and _God, I wish you were here’s_ , through their closed door, in both their voices, using a tone Jeff would call plaintive. Then they’d keep on walking to the kitchen and maybe ask each other the next time Linnie was at school or they were alone upstairs, _You don’t think_ , and laugh because _come on_.

Adam reached out to his dad with one while hand still holding on to her, his fingers dipping under the collar of his shirt urging him closer, wearing the same soft look Mom had all week.

Vinny inched back through the living room and decided he’d see if the squabbling in the basement was better or worse.

 

It hadn’t shaped up to be the _most_ uncomfortable dinner he’d ever been a part of, but _still_.

He hadn’t helped matters, refusing to purposefully make eye contact with anyone, but he figured he was the last of their concerns when Steph would hardly talk, even to Linnie, and Evan looked like he was waiting for a chance to start shit with Jeff again. It felt like it was down to Linnie and Jeff to keep acting normal in front of their guest, and they could only do so much.

Maybe no one noticed, anyway. The whole table was pretty distracted, and Mom had turned her fretting on Adam, demanding he account for how he was keeping himself safe, what protective clothing he wore, and how often they were checking his dosimeter, worrying at him long enough that he reached across the table in front of everyone to hold her hand. For a while, too, not a brief pat or squeeze, but holding on to her. Vinny risked a glance to see the sweetest smile on his face, like he’d only ever had eyes for her.

Then he opened his mouth and said, “James was the one who told me I should do particle research.”

“Wow, that’s convenient,” she deadpanned as Dad turn to him, accusing, “You absolute _rat_.”

He didn’t care what they got up to if it made them happy, but after stewing in his own awkward behavior through blessings, dinner, and more blessings, he was relieved when they said they were dropping food off for Kim at the hospital and going for a drive after, then asking them—and only partly joking—if they could refrain from tearing the house down if they decided to stay over at Kim’s place when she got off work?

Sure, they could absolutely keep it down to a dull roar—as long as the character sheets stayed in the basement. Not that it mattered much. The only people working tomorrow were him and Evan, and they didn’t have to be there until mid-morning. Jeff always tried to schedule off for appointments, even if he only had one in the afternoon, and of course, Steph and Linnie were out of work and school, respectively, for the next couple of days.

So there wasn’t much stopping the five of them from spreading out through the living room and bringing out more snacks, having the guys turn on the Atari while Linnie pretended to read, but actually joined in heckling whoever was playing. Even Steph got involved eventually, letting her book sit in her lap as she laughed at their pathetic attempts at beating her _Super Breakout_ high score.

Sometimes, it was impossible to feel normal between the hours of therapy, and the worry that he was lagging behind, and the disappointment of restarting his medication. But having one evening with all the people who understood, were doing this alongside him; having an evening with no one in bed yet with morning appointments or early work or a bus to catch—

It felt perfect.

But when the game’s beeping and chirps quieted and the conversation lulled, his own voice echoed in his head cruelly, asking what comes after perfection.

 

Vin woke up sitting on the floor with a stiff neck, his head flopped back on the couch cushions and someone’s hip.

It was Jeff’s hip he’d been touching, he learned, pushing himself up, trying not to grunt as he stretched and wake him. Or wake Linnie either, laid out with her head near the other arm and her legs tangled with Jeff’s. He checked around the room; nothing was on except the kitchen light, and in its scant glow, he couldn’t see Evan or Steph.

Bleary and wanting water, Vin walked to kitchen, not expecting them to be there, but he stopped short of grabbing a glass because he could hear them talking. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if they’d gone down to the basement to talk without waking the rest of them while they fucked around with dice and game pieces…and maybe Jeff’s campaign notes, if he was unlucky.

But he shook off some of the sleep hanging over him, and as his hearing adjusted, he realized their voices weren’t drifting up from downstairs; they were muffled through the thin glass of the window.

“How would that even happen—have part of your shadow cut off?” Evan asked, upset and loud enough Vinny could understand him clearly.

Steph matched him in volume, sounding distressed. “That’s what I mean. It can’t happen.”

“This isn’t something Mom told you about.”

“No, I read about it, and it sounded, I don’t know, funny, and I didn’t think anything would happen.”

“Yeah, nothing happened,” he spit out, getting louder still. “So what, your shadow looked weird, big fucking deal.”

Vin didn’t bother closing the back door behind him, and he hoped the noise wasn’t enough to wake Jeff and Linnie—or the neighbors—as he turned to the patio to find Steph grasping at her pendant, hand hidden in hand, and leaning away from Evan.

His face was flushed, and he’d bent himself over the arm of the lawn chair, seething. “You’re not dying because some fuckhead made up some bullshit story about a dude losing his shadow head or what the fuck ever.”

“Hey,” he said, and their heads turned to stare at him trying to make up any excuse for them to come in, to get Evan to stop yelling and calm down. How worked up did he have to be to forget Steph couldn’t take this shit?

Evan looked like he was getting ready to yell at him now, too, and he scrambled for something. “I think it might start raining soon,” he said, once again unable to look them in the eyes. “You want to come back in?”

Steph was up as soon as he had the words out, jumping out of her chair, and hurrying away as Evan went limp and dropped into his seat, watching her go.

Vin waited there in the warm, cloudless night, watching Evan hang his head and stare at his hands until he stood, too, and followed Vinny back inside.


	6. 10 October 1981 – Aaron and Deborah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stuff about the dead animals in sinkholes is based on a recollection from section five of [this Cracked article](http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2537-i-live-in-centralia-pa-its-americas-creepiest-ghost-town.html). Heads up, this is a major character death chapter.

The apples had barely been cleared off the table before Linnie had taken on her _serious posture_ and came to Mom with her mouth twisting together like she didn’t actually want to ask her a question. She’d stood off to the side watching the few leftovers be packed away, waiting until Mom acknowledged her to ask, “Do you think Steph will come to the sukkah this year?”

Mom’s elbows locked, and she leaned heavily into the counter, unsteady on her feet, managed a croaking _yes_ before dissolving into tears, and clutching at Linnie like she was going to go next.

Even still, Linnie had to all but beg them to put it up, reminding them that Steph loved doing this, that building it was her favorite part, _please_.

Yeah, the building. Where he and his brothers were enchanted by a grown-up version of their childhood forts, Steph had seen an art project that needed tending and care. Each panel was adjusted how she wanted it, knots tied strategically, decorations placed methodically. She was excited for the rest of it, sure, but her enthusiasm was usually tempered by the chill in the air, and she wasn’t ashamed about pleading discomfort and running back inside. Shavuot was what she had really latched on to, the same way Vinny felt about Pentecost—you’re fully part of the community now, welcome, welcome, welcome. Well, Steph was the leader of fall’s welcoming committee, the person out the door the minute Yom Kippur was over to drag the panels out of the shed, the spark that started the fire and got the celebratory spirit going.

Without her, no one was in the spirit. This year it was a chore they did reluctantly, out of obligation, or out of the need to ease the crease between Linnie’s eyes. The dragging feeling of setting it up was a stark contrast to how long it actually look—felt like forever, but it was such a rush job. Thrown together quick, knots tied tight but without much thought, bamboo mats laid over the two by fours instead of them cutting the covering themselves.

By then, even Linnie was daunted by the idea of decorating the sad looking thing the way Steph had, said _maybe later_ , and they left their depressing team effort to sit over Shabbat, full of empty chairs and bare tables, waiting for its guests. Their enchanting fort had been reduced to a cold, dark shape in the yard, wearing at him with memories of his sister, when he’d caught sight of it through the window of their bright, warm house.

Maybe they were making it too hard. Maybe they could convince Linnie it could be decorated a new way. Maybe, just this once, Mom would pick Ruth up this year with Ecclesiastes. Maybe they could just _buy_ a cheesecake. It shouldn’t be this difficult and painful to remember her. They still have time to work it out, with two more days before the holiday, and the intermediate days even, to find ways to keep Steph with them that didn’t hurt so bad. 

Today, they have to worry about a different holiday. Today, he doesn’t want Mom to worry about them. Today, Evan has work, but when he and Linnie go outside to ask if he wants a ride, he stays silent and sullen in one of their ratty picnic chairs, spread out and staring at the sukkah. He only acknowledges Jeff to glare at him, vicious enough for him to nudge Linnie to the other side of the patio with the last of the season’s rose blooms, so he could wait with Evan until he wanted to speak.

When some awful, skittering thing comes skulking out from behind their shed, half in shade, half in sun, throwing its horrid black eyes on his sister.

 

The first year they’d been here and getting ready for this, she asked if they wanted to invite any family to come—anyone who’d passed away, that is. Mothers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, a special friend. Anyone at all they wanted to remember.

And he, an antagonistic fourteen year old, disbelieving that she was asking them to—what? Summon ghosts to their dinner table?—challenged her over it. His family wasn’t Jewish; why would they come? If ghosts aren’t real, what are we doing?

Even after years of patience from both of them, he hadn’t expected his questions and his dad’s grin and elbow to her side to make her happy, but it did (and he hadn’t understood why until the spring he got to know Passover past _do this in remembrance of me_ ). She told him that it didn’t matter if their spirits weren’t physically with them—their memories would be. That was what was important, to remember and carry on the good they’d taught you. Then, she explained everyone’s invited, especially this time of year, because we were all going to be eating at the same table in the next world anyway.

But he wasn’t satisfied and asked again, did she really think they were going to bring ghosts into their hut?

“I can only hope,” she’d said, passing him more bread, face lit by the glow from candles burning on the sideboard.

“It’s not an assignment,” she went on, “just something to think about. It’s a new year. What do you want to bring into it with you?”

He’d carried that memory with him outside an hour ago, while it was early and quiet, as he tried again to catalog everything he could remember about Steph, from the moment he knew she existed and her shitty uncle wouldn’t let her talk to him to the minute she closed her bedroom door for the last time. Is it possible to dredge up every painting and sketch and chalk doodle done with their little sister? How many times did they take turns slapping each other’s arms over the dumb shit they’d said and done? Why didn’t he take a picture each time she’d intentionally misunderstood Jeff and Vin to wind them up? How many pictures did he even have of her, left in shoe boxes in the closet that may as well have been boxes full of knives for how dangerous they were to him.

Too many questions and not enough of her. He could sit on this patio forever grieving over her, and forever could start today as far he was concerned. He doesn’t want to drag himself out of this chair for work, to smile at the people who’ve spent years thinking that she was—they all were—irredeemable freaks and murderers, but the back door opens, and it’s Jeff who comes out hunched over, hands in his pockets to make sad eyes at him.

Everything in him wants to snap, ready to lash out at anyone available, and the look he gives Jeff has him…sending Linnie away, wandering off to knock the petals off the flowers in Mom’s little garden.

He takes a few deep breaths before opening his mouth to ask Jeff what he wants, but Jeff goes scared-animal-headlight-still staring into the treeline.

Evan turns his head to see what has Jeff scared, fully expecting to see it towering out there, but when his eyes catch on this thing, there’s a face—features, mouth, nose, animals eyes on something that looks mostly human but moves on all fours in the gap between the shed and the sukkah.

Then it turns to face the house and sprints.

Jeff dashes in front of Linnie, pushes her close to the house, backing her towards the door. Evan wants to grab her, rush those few feet into the house, put solid walls between them and it. But, the _stench_.

It straps him into his chair with memories of flesh half cooked, of animals that had the ground open up under them, and trying to pull themselves out, suffocated instead, roasting in the ground. 

Like the steam itself, pouring out of the vents, man made and otherwise, like the faces full of burning rock and dirt they’d get looking in.

Like what he imagines it smelled like when they found him sitting on top of the nurse. He doesn’t remember— _he doesn’t_. He only knows what it smelled like when he woke up in his doctor’s arms, leaving the cell in the hospital where they’d tried to stick him.

Like inside out. It smells like inside out.

And he can’t move for all the weight of memory, true and false, pressing him down, until it crashes into Jeff.

 

He’d woken up early and then just laid in bed for a while, listened to Evan shift around above him while his radio played, heard Jeff wake up and get dressed, alternated staring at the bottom of Evan’s bunk with staring at the wall where all his saints stared back at him. Which included Steph now.

In a fit of melancholy, he’d dug into Evan’s box of extras, the photos that didn’t make the album, and found a shot of Steph plopped down on the stairs to their rooms, a little blurry, but smiling, looking mostly at the camera, and he’d tacked it on the wall between Mary and Therese, which he’s sure would have pissed her off on multiple levels.

His mourning feels strangely stunted, like he doesn’t have the tools to make this work, like nothing he has in him is appropriate for her. He’s used to his grief welling up by the decade, bead after bead, in litanies, and asking for those in Christ to pray, pray, pray. He knows mourning by black and purple and flowers and incense. In the body and blood. That…doesn’t quite apply here.

And candles are all he has left for his grief.

He drops his money in the box and lights two for her every Sunday. Lights two whenever he bikes home from the grocery store. Lights two whenever he has a reason to walk to the middle of town. And he’s found a couple reasons to go for a lot of walks these past few weeks: the need to snatch at anything that makes it easier to remember her and the need to keep her memory close.

The door across the hall opens, and Mom says to Linnie, “Yeah, let’s find something really pretty.”

If Linnie’s getting ready, he should be getting dressed, too, and setting out plates for breakfast. If Mom can keep it together when Linnie won’t go in her bedroom alone, he should be able to talk about her, at least. If they can get up every day, he should be able to, too.

It still takes an eternity for him to crawl out of bed and into clothes, and in that time, Jeff tells him while Vin pulls plates and forks, Evan has been sitting out back in his pajamas, unmoving.

Jeff sets the milk on the counter and asks, “You want to talk to him?”

“Uh,” he stalls, looking to his full hands, and tries to fill his mouth with an excuse.

“Right, stupid question,” Jeff says, walking away. Linnie runs after him, and he winds his fingers into her hair as he guides her out the door.

They have a few moments of peace where there’s only the soft clink of setting plates on the table and the rustle of Mom shaking the coffee cake out of the box and onto a tray before they hear Linnie screaming and the sound of wood falling in on itself, and running to the kitchen window, see some grotesque animal launch itself across the yard and onto Jeff.

Who pushes at it, trying to send it away, but, its hands—human hands with claws tear at him, and his blood spills across the grass. Jeff screams, and Evan hurls himself towards it, wraps his arms around its neck, pulls at its head.

Seeing _Evan_ trying to pummel it into submission has him trying to bolt out the door with his bundle of forks, but Mom snags his collar and stops him in his tracks.

“I need you to call the ambulance.”

He shouts something jumbled in confusion, but she repeats, calmly, even as she shoves him at the phone and runs toward her room, “Call the ambulance.”

He dials and waits, agonizing because he can’t see what’s happening. He can only hear Jeff and Evan and Linnie screaming, crying, begging. He hears Jeff start to gag and cough. He doesn’t hear the thing at all.

Then Mom’s running back to the kitchen gripping something under a blanket. “Then call Dad,” she orders and slams her way out the door.

The operator picks up as a gun goes off, and he stutters out, “I need—ambulance. My brother—my brother’s dying.”

 

The last time Linnie slept alone was almost three years ago when she woke up in the hospital, scared because she knew her family was dead and not knowing what was going to happen next. Before that she slept with her bubbe in her big bed with her head under the covers. Before that, she liked to sleep on a pallet in her parents’ room because— _because_.

After she woke up in the hospital, she slept in the children’s wing. Then she slept in her own bed, mostly, in a room with Steph.

She hasn’t slept in her room since Steph died. She tries to sleep in places where she won’t remember waking up and looking over and—and so she curls up between Mom and Dad most nights, and where she used to hold her bubbe’s hand all night if she’d let her, they kind of do the same to her, reaching over in the night to pat her arm or her head, and then sigh and relax. 

They’d done the same to her brothers, touching them to make sure they were still there. Reaching over to touch the back of Vinny’s arm while he was cooking, rubbing Evan’s shoulder after helping him take the laundry upstairs, pushing Jeff’s hair behind his ears when he came home from work and telling him he needed a hair cut or his manager was going to complain.

Jeff isn’t coming home tonight. She knows that before the phone rings, and Evan answers.

Jeff isn’t coming home _ever_ , and she’s shaking again in Vinny’s arms as Evan scrubs at his eyes and _whispers_ , “You know it wasn’t an animal, Mom.”


	7. 8 October 1982 – David and Ruth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Referenced alcohol abuse

Adam wasn’t going to tell her _no_ even though he knew nothing good would come of it. Who cared? More to the point, who was even around to care? 

The damage was already done.

So when she called with her voice creaking like house ready to cave in, asking if he wouldn’t mind stopping by after he’d seen Kim, if he had some free time even for a couple hours _please_ , what was he supposed to do, tell her no? I’m not coming anywhere near you because you know what could happen? Suffer alone in your empty house, and stay in bed mourning your dead—or dead to you—children? And have fun wondering where your husband’s gone because he won’t even tell me.

 _The fucking idiot_ , he thought, letting himself in. _It’s too late for a quarantine_.

Years of repetition still had him kicking his shoes off by the front door, but as he looked down to push them to the side, he noticed the entry way didn’t look right. He stood there for several long seconds wondering what they’d changed before he realized it looked different because their shoes were gone.

He looked around him, stepping into the living room, and the house was shockingly empty—not of furniture, though several pieces were missing, including the enormous dining room table she’d been so fond of. The rooms were missing the possessions he’d last seen a couple years ago. The shoes left out in front of the closet, the art supplies scattered around the living room, the records, the books. All gone.

It looked like they’d been ransacked— _robbed_.

“Mary?” he called out, slowly moving towards the unnervingly vacant dining room. “It’s Adam.”

Their belongings weren’t contaminated, but, unwilling to take the risk that it would spread, the better part of their things had gone to the landfill. Their clothes, their bikes, their beds—trashed. These things weren’t a biohazard that needed to be sealed off, but still, the pieces they couldn’t bear to part with were hidden away in far corners of the house where no one could stumble over them.

There was nothing physically carried inside a person that needed to be destroyed, nothing that could be killed off with enough alcohol taken internally, and _yet_.

James had called that April, distraught over how it had gone and rambling about this immense cleaning, this shuffling everything back to how it was when they first moved in, recounting how Maryann had been demanding answers from him, about why he'd even bought that gun, why then, about how could he possibly take away everything that could provoke a memory when the creaking in the stairs reminded her of them. He admitted he had tried, had done his best to fix every squeaking stair, and then he broke down and would say nothing else but _I’ve failed them_ until Adam told him to shut up and call back when he sobered up.

James hadn’t called back.

He stopped in the middle of the dining room as Maryann limped out of the kitchen to greet him, wearing her robe and deep bruises under her eyes, looking ashen and far too thin.

“You look like you need to be resting. What are you doing down here?” he asked, skipping the formalities. He rested his hands on her shoulders when she didn’t answer and peered behind her, silently questioning what could be so important that she’d shoved her health aside to be in the kitchen.

In the dark, too. She had the curtains closed against the late morning sun, the sink full of dishes, and a bowl situated on the top of the pile with remnants of dough sticking to it. Dish towels rested over baking sheets on the stove.

Taking her into his arms, he tucked her head under his chin and rested his face against her greasy hair. “You don’t need to do this shit,” he said, fuming and biting his lip against his temper. “Why don’t you let me take care of you for once, okay?”

She still hadn’t said a word to him, and he kept on, “We don’t even need to be here tonight. We can go see Kim together. What do you think?”

She started sobbing into his shirt.

They all failed. Everything they’d built here was in splinters, and the four of them were caught between a young woman and the few weeks where they thought her loss was another terrible accident and the girl they sent away so nothing else evil would settle on her. With them in the middle were all the days filled with the inexplicable deaths of three young men. All of them, all in a row, all gone.

Maryann threw her arms around him and made a miserable sound into his neck.

Caught between her husband, missing, and whatever the hell he was, here.

“Maryann, if it’s in my power, you know I’ll do anything for you. You just have to say it.”

Which wasn’t a fair request, he knew. There wasn’t anything he could do, and she wasn’t going to voice what she wanted. He was pretty sure it wasn’t even “make them come back.” She just wanted to remember without being scared.

James vanished, and if he thought leaving would erase the memories of his friends and his family, of people raised to remember—remember that you were a slave, what happened to Egypt, how you were led in the wilderness, _how you provoked His wrath_ —he really was an irredeemable idiot.

And Maryann kept her silence, didn’t say what she wanted, wouldn’t confirm his suspicions that she hadn’t been able to do what James had asked and leave it all behind. Instead, she continued weeping against him, like she was going to draw up every drop of water in her to pour out onto chest.


	8. 3 October 2007 – Solomon and Esther

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [slides [“Hoshanot after the end of a marriage”](https://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2016/10/hoshanot-after-the-end-of-a-marriage.html) across the table] Honestly, this says exactly what I wanted to in a much more elegant way.

Maryann supposes the police did her a kindness when they called to inform her they were finished with his effects, though she’d have liked to keep pretending she hadn’t wanted them to call. She’d also have liked to go on pretending she hadn’t noticed time passing or the seasons changing. She’d have really liked to not spent that last two summers mourning anything beisdes the loss of the Temple.

She’d tried. She could truthfully say she’d thrown the detective’s card away and done her best to drive the case number out of her head. She hadn’t kept up with the case and let any accidentally seen headlines or articles drop out of her mind. There wasn’t time in her life for strangers’ problems with letting the past go when she couldn’t unclench her fists from it either.

All in all, she thought she’d made a valiant effort to follow his instructions, but then they called, saying she could pick up her box within the next sixty days. They went on, telling her the car would have to stay though, as it still had a hold on it.

The banality of it was killing her, and her focus wandered through their administrative technicalities. She managed to jot down the important numbers, but it was as if someone else had taken the call because, after she hung up, she didn’t remember anything except what she’d written.

It’s not funny, but well, practice makes perfect. How did her children manage to keep this up for so long?

There’s so much bitterness inside her blaming Hopewell for ruining what little peace she had. Every time she thinks she’s done picking up the pieces of last time, that she put everything together into a coherent picture of a life before—a life without—there it went, falling apart again. There’s a part of her saying don’t bother going, and a meanness telling her to leave it and let them reap any lingering malevolence attached to it.

But her longing, her need to touch the things he’d touched, to grasp at any scraps that were left, that was the loudest part of her.

 

The drive was so long for a meeting so short—with the one officer on the east coast who didn’t care she was Widow Corenthal. He nodded his way through the conversation, glanced at her identification, had her fill out some meaningless paperwork, and then asked a young woman carry the box out. At least she looked suitably frightened of someone who felt so cursed.

And that was it.

She doesn’t know what to do with herself in the abrupt finality of it, wonders if this is how it feels to get ashes back—here you go; this is all that’s left; get out—and stunned, she can’t make herself start the car. Instead of leaving, she sits in the parking lot, drops the box in her lap, and digs in.

There’s the normal car debris on top, receipts, change, phone charger, and _pens_. From multipacks and from motels and _more than one_ with part of a chain attached. Oh God, how many pens did one man need?

The absurdity hits her so hard she cackles. Unbelievable that she could walk through the wreckage of so many lives, and he could still make her laugh. She lays her head against the steering wheel, wheezing, until she’s left with the gut twisting unease she always gets when forced to remember that they were fairly average people before this.

She sits up and brushes another crumpled gas station ticket out of the way, and underneath, things turn more peculiar. Knickknacks and other weird tourist-y things, postcards and menus make a solid layer over printouts from his father and legal memos and notes he intended for his partner. The bulk of it she has no context for, and it makes no sense. All it does is make her feel like a stranger, and setting that aside, she reaches the photographs.

Starting from the spring after they got on at the home, going to just before the fall of ‘81. She pulls out piles of instant film and thirty-five millimeter prints of the whole family. People frozen in happier times. People not fully gone, lingering, _trapped_.

She should have told them to keep it. Or dump it and burn it. Give it to the press pool for all she cared. Should have hung up when they said who they were, or stopped answering her phone all together.

But she didn’t. Instead, she’d done exactly what she wasn’t supposed to—look back, call them to mind, and wish for what could have been—and not only that, but she’d done it minutes away from Fiddler’s Creek, a few miles from the future they’d planned together.

The photos are thrown back, and the box lands heavily in the passenger seat. Her head hits the steering wheel again, and she tells herself how stupid she is; _You don’t have to be a doctor to figure out how this will go, Maryann_.

But she hasn’t seen their faces, anything of them in years— _decades_ , and—and who can expect a person to fast forever?

Twisting around to get to the backseat, rummaging through the mess—a bad habit she never grew out of—she grabs a notebook, reaches for one of the many pens in James’s stash, and accidentally pulls one of the photos out with it, an early one of James and Evan, still a resident, when the home had taken all the kids to the water park on the lake.

She turns it over looking for a date written by whoever had the film developed or whoever passed the photo along to them because they could see that she and James had already taken a shine to him, and…finds James’s hand writing giving her more instructions.

 

The papers she carries weigh close to nothing, but they feel like a brick in her hand as she steps onto the trail. By the time she nears the buildings, they’ve turned crumpled and damp where she clutches at them, gathered enough weight to leave her hunched over, and those paltry couple of papers may as well have turned into a boulder she’ll have to heave up the steps. 

She expected that when she saw their big almost again, she’d feel something, but as she rounds the path and looks out, she feels flat. There’s no shocking recognition, nothing in her saying welcome home. There’s only abandoned plans to rebuild.

It was a bit of a wreck back then, and it’s worse now. Countless holes in the walls and roof, vegetation growing over it, vines hanging where they please. There were promises made here, and they’ve all come up empty.

She pushes the web fencing aside and climbs the steps onto the caving in porch and under a covering doing the same, touching the door frame where nothing hangs.

The commandment she’s been most committed to in the years since the call was _forget_. The trouble, if one could call it that, with commandments is that they multiply. The heart of _forget_ is don’t think about it, but that becomes throw it out, and now includes don’t buy that, and is joined by drive another way. It’s don’t do it that way again, don’t listen to that band, and don’t wear your wedding ring. There’s so much work in clearing a slate, in pushing on. Maybe the weight of her words has been growing for a lot longer than a walk through the woods.

She steps inside and can’t make herself stay there longer than it takes to lay one burden down, dropping her letter in a pile of leaves. There’s no use exploring. This isn’t like the time they broke into Fairmount’s buildings looking for a new room for the kids. There’s nothing to see here but decay. She turns around and walks out, but then, can’t make herself walk back to the car, either. There’s not enough optimism left in her to voice the hope that if she waits a few more minutes he might tumble out of a cellar or a shed.

Still, she lowers herself onto the porch and stays to watch, through the gaps in the collapsing roof, the stars come out.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for coming along! It’s been a hell of a year, and I really appreciate sharing it with you. <3
> 
> no playlist, but  
> [Lord Huron – Frozen Pines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbSsLPBw9l8) gives me too many Lady of the Light feelings and  
> [Dry The River – Family](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT9CODhHh8s) is a font of Corenthal Family Emotions for me


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